UWP Failed … and Now Apple and Google are Copying It (Premium)

Microsoft’s apps platform for Windows 10 is a failure. So why are Google and Apple both copying it?

It’s an interesting question.

And the answer has its roots in the convoluted process by which each of the three big client platform makers—Apple, Google, and Microsoft—has brought apps and app stores to their respective operating systems.

Microsoft wasn’t the first to integrate a store experience into a legacy desktop OS: Mac, Chrome OS, and various flavors of Linux have all included such a feature for years. But Microsoft’s contribution is unique: It was the first to integrate a mobile apps platform and store into a legacy desktop OS, in Windows 8.

Since then, of course, the world has changed.

For indefensible reasons, Microsoft original had two mobile apps platforms, for Windows phone and “big” Windows, but they were belatedly merged with Windows 10. The result, the Universal Windows Platform (UWP), has failed by any measure. So Microsoft has been expanding its definition of a Store app to include desktop applications and web apps. (Most recently with Progressive Web Apps support in Windows 10 version 1803.)

Less famously, the app stores in both macOS and Chrome OS have also failed. Neither attracted strong support from developers or users, and that both are not mobile app stores is, I think, important.

But both firms have seen great success in mobile, and their respective store experiences, the App Store and the Google Play Store, are major revenue earners that each serve billions of customers. Why did their efforts to duplicate that success on the desktop fail?

The stores in each platform probably suffered from a number of unique issues but there’s one major similarity, and I think it’s key. With only a tiny fraction of the user base of their respective mobile platforms, these stores could never flourish. And simply bringing a good idea from mobile to the desktop wasn’t enough. Also, and this is true on Windows PCs too, the audiences using macOS and Chrome OS simply aren’t all that engaged compared to those on mobile devices. They are used to download apps from the web.

So, like Microsoft, both Apple and Google are resetting. They are both going in a new direction. In the same direction.

For its part, Apple is rumored to be bringing some subset of iOS apps—possibly just iPad apps—to the Mac. It can do this now because iOS is mature, and now it provides integrated productivity and multitasking features that work particularly well in big-screen apps that would be at home on a Mac. (We will find out more about this work, I think, at WWDC in June.)

Google is even further along: It has already integrated the Android apps platform and its Play Store into Chrome OS, so it’s only a matter of time before we see the first true Chrome-based tablets. (The Pixelbook is a 2-in-1 and hints very strongly that this is coming.)

Put simply, both Apple and Google are taking a page from the Microsoft playbook. One that, again, failed for Microsoft.

So why are they doing this?

The primary reason is scale. Microsoft’s too-early bid to tie a mobile apps platform to a desktop operating system failed because there was no there there: This platform was never successful so it never became a benefit to Windows. If anything, it’s been a burden.

But Google and Apple own tremendously successful mobile apps platforms and stores. And while bringing similar functionality to the desktop seemed to make sense a few years ago, today these firms believe that bringing the actual mobile platforms to the desktop makes even more sense. And I think they’re onto something.

Think about it. The Mac App Store and the Chrome Web Store are both wastelands. And most of these companies’ customers are flocking to mobile, not the desktop. By bringing their popular mobile platforms to the desktop, they’re giving those desktop platforms the boost they need to be more successful. Android apps on Chrome OS, and iPad apps on macOS, actually make sense.

But this strategy never made sense on Windows for two reasons. First, Microsoft’s mobile apps platform was never successful, as noted. And second, it’s not true to the platform: Windows users expect their apps to be full-featured and even a bit complicated. When we sit down at a Windows PC, we expect to work.

That’s probably true of Mac and Chrome OS users too. But both Apple have Google have evolved their once-simplistic mobile platforms to be more sophisticated.

Microsoft alone has not.

This surprise me. I always figured that the Microsoft Store apps platform, what’s now called UWP, would mature over time and become more sophisticated, more full-featured. I figured it started off with basic, touch-first features for a reason and that it would get better over time.

But that never happened. And UWP is not a viable answer for existing Windows application developers who wish to make their products more modern. They have more powerful capabilities at their disposal if they stick with legacy technologies. This weird gap isn’t the only reason that UWP—by which I mean “pure” or “real” UWP—has failed. But now Microsoft is scrambling to bring desktop and web apps to the Store instead. And that should put the final nail in the coffin of new UWP development.

I never anticipated this. But it appears that UWP was designed to be limited. It’s central to the platform. It was actually designed that way on purpose.

The problems with this approach are many. But the goals are pure enough: Simplify Windows as a platform at a time when Microsoft’s core competency is shifting to the cloud. This helps explain all the Windows 10 S/S mode and Windows 10 on ARM work. The client is getting simpler, more mobile-like.

In Microsoft’s view of the future, then, those that still need complex and full-featured desktop applications can get them from what we used to consider workstation-class operating systems. Or, more likely, they will be delivered via the cloud. You know, like games will be too. It’s obvious, isn’t?

The funny thing is, I’ve basically been talking about this shift for a long time. That Microsoft’s desktop platform would shed functionality to become simpler. And that Apple’s (and Google’s) mobile platforms would become more sophisticated too. And that maybe they’d meet somewhere in the middle.

But the piece I never saw was that Microsoft was essentially done advancing UWP. They never really intended to mature this platform to something that matched the capabilities of Win32/.NET and other desktop technologies. This is, I think, a mistake. Because Apple and Google very much intend to improve their mobile platforms to be more sophisticated. In fact, they already have.

Put another way, Microsoft has always intended, I think, to cede the desktop—the client, as it were—to these mobile platforms. It sees its future, correctly, as being in the cloud, where it’s easy to update software on a rapid schedule. And not on the client, where things are messy, and disparate, and rapid software updating is next to impossible to get right.

It’s obvious in retrospect. And a bit sad. But I think that the new Microsoft is more concerned with profits and revenues, and less concerned with our deeply-felt expectations about what this company needs to do. Those expectations are all based in the past. A past that Microsoft has already let go. Maybe it’s time for let go too.